Snapshots
by The Starhorse
Summary: A series of one-shots, these stories offer a brief glimpse into the lives of the Transformers. These stories could feature any variety of characters from the Transformers universe. Some are comedy, some are drama, and some are something in between.
1. Impounded

**Introduction**

I recently took on a brief "drabble" challenge over at my livejournal account, and I liked doing the little snapshots so much that I thought I might upload them here as a collection. I'll be adding to this "Snapshots" series as I write these, and I plan to keep each one very short.

* * *

><p><strong>Impounded<strong>

Bumblebee sat staring moodily at the chain link fence before him. Dusk still gilded its edges in soft lines of rose, while the dirty pavement before him held a fading wash of light, the last breath of a dying day.

"Well."

Beside him, Mirage sat fuming. His engine cut, a boot placed firmly around one of his front tires, the Autobot spy all but radiated his disgust.

"Oh, come on, 'Raj."

That was Jazz. Parked on Bumblebee's other side, and similarly booted, the Special Operations commander was making his best efforts at thawing the spy's icy mood.

"You _knew_ they were going to shut that street down for a parade," Mirage muttered. "You knew it. You picked that street for a stakeout on _purpose_, knowing _full well_ we would be towed and impounded."

"Raj," Jazz countered, "come on, man, how long we been friends? You know I wouldn't do you like that."

"You _would_ do me like that, and we are _not_ friends," Mirage seethed. "In fact, we never have been friends. And actually, I'm quite sure I don't know you. I should alert the impound officer right now that I've been taken hostage by a parti-colored _maniac_!"

"Mirage, seriously," Bumblebee tried to sooth the spy's rising temper. "We can't break cover, even now. You can't -"

"Yes, I know perfectly well what I can and cannot do," Mirage snapped. "And I'll thank you to stuff it up your exhaust before I start in on you too."

"For what?" Bumblebee asked, not quite managing to keep the hint of a quaver out of his vocalizer.

"For being short, yellow, and gauche," the spy retorted, and Bumblebee breathed a sigh of relief. It had been he, of course, who had been charged with picking the stakeout spot. He'd known the parade routes, and planned their position carefully, ensuring a good view, while making sure to position them safely on a side street, and away from the parade route. Of course, he'd forgotten to check for any last minute route change notifications, and just as he, Jazz, and Mirage had gotten to the point in their surveillance plan where they absolutely could not break cover, Bumblebee realized to his horror that he had situated them in a no-park zone. Naturally, tickets were issued, the three of them were towed, and not only did they fail to collect their intel, they were now booted, ticketed, and locked up in the impound yard.

"Raj, man..." Jazz tried one more time. Ever the optimist, that one.

"They even gave me an extra fine for not being street legal," Mirage seethed. "And then took me...for a _joy ride_ around the block."

At that, Jazz just gave up. But Bumblebee gave the saboteur credit for not ratting the minibot out. Bumblebee would owe Jazz for this. Big time.

"You know what I'm going to do?" Mirage spoke up, his voice dangerously quiet. "I'm going to sneak up on you in your sleep, I'm going to disassemble your wretched carcass, and I'm going to ship your parts to the four corners of the world. And then Prowl can just _try_ to find your miserable pieces.

Crickets chirped. The last of the light had faded.

"And don't think I can't do it," the spy added, a chilling note of finality to his tone. "You have to sleep sometime. And you'll never...see...me...coming."

Silence descended at that, Jazz too smart to press his point again, Bumblebee too terrified. The crickets strengthened their chorus all around, and the stars began to come out, showing palely beyond the boundaries of the decrepit yard.

It was going to be a long night.


	2. Not Again

**Not Again**

"NOT AGAIN, NOT AGAIN, I JUST saw you this MORNING!" Ratchet hammered his wrench against the table to punctuate each word.

Wincing slightly, Sideswipe shrank back a bit toward Sunstreaker, not that his brother intended to offer him the barest scrap of protection. "But Ratchet -" he tried, hands held up before him in a half-sparked attempt to ward off further blows.

Not that it did him any good, as it only earned him another sharp rap against the helmet. "Don't you 'but Ratchet' me, you sparking little glitch! I fixed you last night! I fixed you this morning, and now you're IN HERE AGAIN not just with your own damaged self, but with PROWL'S, TOO!"

"But-" Sideswipe tossed a glance sideways at Prowl, who was sitting beside him in a similarly precarious state of health, his mouth deeply downturned.

"NO BUTS!"

"But Ratchet -"

"NO BUT RATCHETS! _NO_ BUT RATCHETS!" the chief medical officer bawled as he rained down blows over Sideswipe's head and shoulders. "You do NOT race around at TWO HUNDRED miles per hour and PLOW into the EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THIS PIG-SWILLING UNIT!"

"But _Ratchet_," Sideswipe protested as he cowered under the blows, "I didn't hit Prowl - Prowl plowed into _me_!"

A moment of silence followed, in which the medic drew back, his face gone quite suddenly and utterly blank. Side by side, Prowl and Sideswipe regarded him, while Sunstreaker looked on with no small amount of elation. "That's true, you know," the yellow warrior broke the ugly silence. "Prowl hit a patch of sand rounding the corner, and T-boned Side but good." He snickered, then added, "So much for your ambush, Prowl."

His face growing ominous, his frown deepening by the second, Ratchet slid his steely gaze toward the tactician. "Is...that...true...?"

By way of reply, Prowl pressed his mouth into a thin line, as an uncharacteristic look of embarassement crept across his features. It was all Ratchet needed. Without another word, he simply launched into beating the tactician about the head and shoulders, an act which he had no doubt been wanting to perform for some years now, and which Prowl merely suffered with a wince and upraised arms. There would be payback later to be sure, but for now, both Sideswipe and Sunstreaker contented themselves to smile and enjoy the show.

Because no matter what, this was going down as the best wreck of Sideswipe's life.


	3. Graffiti

**Graffiti**

Grumbling not-quite-under his vocalizer, Red Alert picked his way through the litter of spray cans, beer bottles, and cigarette cartons. "Hooligans. Ruffians. Unrepentent _degenerates_," he muttered as he surveyed the almost endless expanse of graffiti. It stretched away through the underpass, and continued down along the concrete barriers hedging the road. He'd merely been driving through, but the sight of such riotous desecration had made him stop and stare. The city had suffered a rash of graffiti lately, and this enormous collection of indecipherable scrawling simply blew his mind.

"Gross breach of protocol, unmannerly behavior, the wretched law breakers," his litany continued unabated, his voice rising now so that his words echoed a little off of the cement arch just above his head. Stooping to pick up a discarded can, he gave the nozzle an experimental squeeze, and scowled deeply as a red mist came spurting out. "They don't even make full use of their own supplies before discarding them in the street. Defacing public property, wasting perfectly good paint, which could otherwise be used to improve the general appearance of the city - they're wasteful, littering, cigarrette smoking, beer swilling..._vandals_." The last word came out in a vicious hiss, his ranting having reached such a pitch that he didn't even notice the sound of jet engines approaching, and only came to at the crashing sound of someone landing on two feet just outside the underpass.

Skidding deeply, and scattering spray cans and fast food bags as he plowed through the mess of debris, Thrust slid to a screeching stop, and without preamble, jabbed a quivering finger at Red Alert's face. "BUSTED!" he crowed, and summoned a camera, which he jiggled in the Autobot's face so violently that Red Alert could barely see the picture, "You are SO BUSTED!"

"Busted, what -?" Red Alert snapped, then gasped in horror as he realized what was on the camera.

"RED HANDED!" Thrust bellowed. "RED HANDED with the paint can IN YOUR HAND, defacing this city! The Autobots' own Chief of Security! And I got you on CAMERA!"

Red Alert shot a horrified look at the can of spray paint in his hand, even as Thrust snapped off another few shots with his camera. "Oh my spark..."

"I got you! I _GOT YOU_!" Thrust brayed, and backed off for clearance to take off. Too late, Red Alert made a grab for him, but the Seeker was simply too fast, and launched himself skyward with a surprising amount of grace, considering that it was Thrust.

"YOU GET BACK HERE!" Red Alert roared. "That wasn't - I - I wasn't -!"

"I'm telling the mayor!" Thrust bellowed over the roar of his own thrusters. "I'm sending these to the cops! I'm posting these on Facebook! In fact, I'm TWEETING THEM RIGHT NOW! Tweet, tweet! TWEET, TWEET! MWUAHAHAHAHA!" With that, the red Seeker rocketed away through the clouds, and left Red Alert standing gapemouthed behind him.

With a dismal groan, the Autobot security chief let the paint can slip through his fingers, where it clatter to the concrete below. Touching his forehead with the palm of one hand, he frowned as his vision began to double. He could feel another migrain coming on.

Emitting an involuntary whimper, Red Alert sank down to sit among the debris, where he quietly began the initial stages of a meltdown.


	4. War

**War**

"It just wasn't the same. I wasn't the same. After the war." Sparkplug took a sip of his coffee, and set the cup down again with a soft clink. Sitting across from him, cup of oil blend cradled almost absently in his fingers, Ratchet regarded the human. Sparkplug gave his chin a scratch, his finger scraping audibly across the end-of-day stubble. "We fought, Gina and I. Spike was only two at the time." He shook his head. "Like I said, it wasn't the same. I used to be a funny drunk. After the war, I turned into a mean one."

Sparkplug fell silent at that, and went back to sipping. "I've heard Vietnam did that to a lot of guys," Ratchet commented quietly, when the silence had dragged out too long.

"It did," Sparkplug answered readily, softly. "Made us into people we were never supposed to be. Made us mean. Made us -" He broke off, his voice suddenly tight. Then taking another sip, he seemed to smooth himself over again, and said, "Anyway, she left me. I never hit her or anything, it wasn't like that. But I was...just so bitter. And it showed, in every single word I said to her. We tried to work things out for about a year, but she finally gave up, and she left. And I don't blame her."

"But," Ratchet furrowed his brow, "what about Spike? You don't mean she left him too?"

"Oh, no, she tried to take him," Sparkplug replied, brows raised. "And I would have let her. A kid needs his mom. But, they were different times back then, and she was as messed up as I was. She ran off to one of those communes, wanted to 'live free' or some such thing. And I just wasn't going to let Spike live in some hippie community. Not with all the weirdos out there in the world." He shrugged, and took another sip. "Long story short, she couldn't provide a reliable address, and the judge awarded full custody of Spike to me."

He took another sip, eyes vacantly staring into nothing. Then with the coffee cup poised halfway between his mouth and the table, he said, "And you'd think I would have been happy, winning Spike like that. But I wasn't. I was crazy angry. I was so angry - at Gina, for leaving us, at myself for letting her go, at the United States Army, at the entire country of Vietnam. I was angry, insane angry, you know? There were more holes than wall in the house, and I broke my knuckles at least a good ten times just punching through drywall. I hated myself. I hated myself for being a drunk, for surviving the war, for being the world's most useless husband." He paused, giving his head a half-shake, then said in a quieter voice, "I remember this one night. This one night, I was halfway through a bottle of Jack, and Spike was bawling his head off, saying he wanted his mama. And I just felt like my brain was going to explode. Here I was, mad enough to kill, and this three-year-old kid was just screaming and screaming. I remember shaking him. It was awful. I took him by the arms, and I shook him, and yelled at him to shut up, told him his mama was gone, that she was never coming back. I was...I was out of control. And I remember the look in his eye. He got this real wide-eyed look, and he took a breath in, and his mouth was hanging open so big. When he finally let his breath out, it was like he wasn't even my son anymore. It was like a wounded animal crying. The look of pure terror in his eyes was so big, and so...so real. And I caused that."

Sparkplug was quiet a long time then. Slowly, he lowered his cup to the table, while Ratchet watched him. "Then what happened?" the medic asked softly, after a time.

Mouth downturned, Sparkplug stared at the table for another minute. Then he said in a calm voice, "That was the bottom for me. Scaring my kid. I never thought I'd be that dad, you know? I love that kid. So the next day I went out, and I found a group down at the local church - one of those men's support groups. One of those programs that deals with addictions, war vets, the whole nine. Saved my life. Spike's, too." He raised the coffee cup to his lips again, sipped, and continued, "I went to that group for about a year or two. I still talk to a bunch of those guys. I'd probably still live in that town if the economy hadn't gone south, and I had to take that job on the oil rig. Too bad about that, too. I took Spike with me, home-schooled him. But I don't think it was much of a life for the kid. And when Gina finally cleaned up her act, Spike was always out to sea. They wrote, and visited when we were in port. But I wished..."

He broke off, shook his head again, took another sip. "Yeah, I know about wishing," Ratchet answered, his brief smile not quite touching his optics.

"She's married now." Sparkplug added. "Decent guy. Contractor in Utah. I'm happy for her, but I just...I feel sometimes like my entire life slipped away when I let her go. It was my fault, and I know it. It was the war, but really, it was me."

"War is like that," Ratchet observed.

Sparkplug let out a soft snort, part derision, part acceptance. "That's part of why I've hung around this place like I have. Out there, people don't get it. But you get it. The Autobots get what war does. You know what war is."

Ratchet offered another little smile. "That we do."

At that, Sparkplug met his optics, and he said, his eyes very deep in the half-light, "It's like ripples in a pond, you know? War. It keeps taking lives long after the bullets have stopped flying."


End file.
